Polystyrene

WE HEAR that polystryrene foam is bad for the environment. Every day, our school uses hundreds of polystryrene foam trays. How come our school is using them? McDonald's doesn't use polystyrene foam anymore. I don't think we should either.Katie McDaniel First grade Longwood Elementary School LONGWOOD

CLERMONT -- Ever wonder what happens to all those foam drink cups, containers and packing materials after you throw them out? For years the answer was simple -- they went to the dump, crushed with tons of other garbage and left to sit in a big hole seemingly forever. Now a startup company in south Lake County has come up with another idea. Reuse it. Founders of Blue Earth Solutions say they have a process that breaks down Styrofoam and other expanded polystyrene products, chemically reducing the material back into its plasticlike original form.

Manufacturer: Several companies.The problem: Bean-bag style cushions filled with polystyrene beads are a suffocation risk to infants, especially those less than 6 months old. So far, 10 deaths have been reported. According to an investigation by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the victims were 3 months old or younger. All had fallen asleep on the cushions and were found lying face down.Cushions are about 24 inches long by 12 inches wide, usually made of quilted fabric and loosely filled with plastic foam beads or pellets.

What a timely issue this is. We can no longer deny the urgent need to create a sustainable environment. It's just crazy to have millions of dollars' worth of aluminum and other usable products in landfills, and all too many folks seem oblivious as they continue wasteful practices. Waste is the right word: "to use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose." I propose three easy things we can do: 1. Get schools back on track with recycling. For a while, it was happening, and is now all but abandoned except in lunchrooms.

Will your next house have walls of the same material used to make plastic coffee cups?Polystyrene foam, reinforced with concrete, is shaping up as one of the most-likely-to-succeed alternative materials for building walls in a period of skyrocketing lumber prices and environmentalist movements to preserve and protect old forests.''We use expanded polystyrene, exactly the same as a foam coffee cup but modified to be fire resistant,'' said Henry Guarriello Jr., corporate secretary of Reddi-Form Inc. of Fairless Hills, Pa., describing an interlocking-block system for building walls that is made by Reddi-Form.

Last May, 9-year-old Leah Altmay stepped up to the microphone at Seminole County school district headquarters with some words of wisdom about recycling plastic foam dishware.''We were told that Styrofoam (the most common brand of plastic foam) is recyclable, but you never see a bin that says, 'Put Styrofoam here,' '' said Leah, a fourth-grader at Altamonte Elementary School.Perhaps the presiding adults should have listened more carefully. Eight months after school officials promised to look for alternatives to sending plastic foam to the landfill, the school district still is throwing away hundreds of thousands of plastic foam trays, cups and plates each week.

It usually takes weeks for a house to be built.But a new home for James and Retta Petrone of Leesburg will go from abstract to concrete on Friday in just a few hours.Their house at the Riverside development at Bassville Park will be built of poured concrete using expanded polystyrene forms. The forms will be provided by Polysteel Building Supply, a new Eustis company pushing poured concrete as an energy-efficient - and hurricane-resistant - alternative to conventional construction.The forms remain a part of the house, serving as inside and outside insulation.

QUESTION: I believe in recycling and have been frustrated that recycling centers won't accept the polystyrene trays that come with the hamburger and other meats that I buy at the supermarket. Any suggestions?ANSWER: Recycling centers as a rule do not accept poly- styrene - a k a Styrofoam - products that have come in contact with food. That's true for most schools and supermarkets too. But Publix stores will take polystyrene meat trays for recycling, as well as other polystyrene trays and cartons that are used for fish, fruits and vegetables, and eggs.

POLYSTYRENE FOAM BAN. The Iowa House has approved what would be the nation's first statewide ban on food packaging made of polystyrene foam. But the measure was given little chance of success in the Senate. The ban was adopted 49-46 Wednesday night. It was in a bill to allocate $400 million in state lottery profits for environmental programs during the next decade. Polystyrene foam containers are widely used in the fast-food industry, notably cups and hamburger boxes. Environmentalists say the tough, flexible plastic takes generations to break down, is not easily recyclable and causes litter.

An order arrives from a mail-order catalog house in a sturdy cardboard carton, filled with little nuggets of polystyrene to protect the merchandise.After all is unpacked, the question now becomes what can be done with the bits of polystyrene, usually shaped like peanuts or tiny figure-eights.A new network of polystyrene producers, packaging makers and merchandise shippers has been formed that literally closes the loop from resin to packaging to finished material and back again. In some cases, the plastic nuggets and larger pieces of molded polystyrene - like that used to package computers and electronics equipment - are recycled, and in other cases it's gathered up and reused.

It takes a lot of Styrofoam to make 2 1/2 tons. Little white packing peanuts and the blocks that fill the empty space around your new television set are lightweight, so it takes mondo mountains of the stuff to account for the 5,000 pounds taken to a Polk County recycling facility each day as part of a pilot project started in 2004. That's only a fraction of what's out there, officials say, and two new grants worth $682,500 awarded recently by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection will expand the pilot program statewide and increase the marketing potential in the United States for the end recycled product.

QUESTION: I believe in recycling and have been frustrated that recycling centers won't accept the polystyrene trays that come with the hamburger and other meats that I buy at the supermarket. Any suggestions?ANSWER: Recycling centers as a rule do not accept poly- styrene - a k a Styrofoam - products that have come in contact with food. That's true for most schools and supermarkets too. But Publix stores will take polystyrene meat trays for recycling, as well as other polystyrene trays and cartons that are used for fish, fruits and vegetables, and eggs.

Earth Day that token 24-hour celebration that enables earthlings to feel less guilty about the other 364 days of trashing the planet is almost upon us. This year, we decided to do something definitive in our own infinitesimal speck of the universe to make a difference. We thought wed swear off Styrofoam once and for all.No Chinese takeout in plastic boxes that will still be around thousands and thousands of years from now about the time Congress manages to balance the budget and O.J. Simpson confesses.

McIntire, who accidentally invented the material used for everything from disposable foam cups to insulation, died Friday in Midland, Mich. He was 77. McIntire was trying to make a new rubberlike polymer by combining styrene with isobutylene, a volatile liquid, under pressure. The styrene formed a polymer, but the isobutylene did not. When the pressure was released, the isobutylene evaporated and made a foam polystyrene with bubbles in it. Dow Chemical named the product Styrofoam and sold it as building insulation, which remains its trademark today.

It usually takes weeks for a house to be built.But a new home for James and Retta Petrone of Leesburg will go from abstract to concrete on Friday in just a few hours.Their house at the Riverside development at Bassville Park will be built of poured concrete using expanded polystyrene forms. The forms will be provided by Polysteel Building Supply, a new Eustis company pushing poured concrete as an energy-efficient - and hurricane-resistant - alternative to conventional construction.The forms remain a part of the house, serving as inside and outside insulation.

Amoco agrees to stop product recycling claimsWASHINGTON - The Federal Trade Commission said Friday it gave final approval to a consent agreement with Amoco Foam Products and its parent company, Amoco Chemical Co., settling charges they falsely claimed their food-service products were recyclable. Although the polystyrene products are capable of being recycled, ''the vast majority of consumers cannot recycle them because there are only a few collection facilities nationwide that will accept them for recycling,'' the FTC said.

PLASTIC DEBATE. Voters in this college town are considering a crackdown on polystyrene coffee cups and other containers made of plastic foams. The proposal is expected to come before the Town Meeting today. The ban is to discourage use of plastics because they are not easily biodegradable, take up considerable space in the town dump and release gases that deplete the ozone layer when they are made or burned, said sponsor Cynthia Pauley. A Polystyrene Packaging Council spokeswoman said fast-food packaging takes up only one- quarter of 1 percent of landfills by weight and volume.

To some environmentalists, the plastic foam clamshell containers from fast food restaurants are a nasty sight. Like the burgers and sandwiches they enclose, there are millions made every year. Once discarded, those containers are not biodegradable.However, they are recyclable.In August, a company in Plant City began recycling these used boxes as well as other kinds of consumer polystyrene and plastic foam products such as molded egg cartons and coffee cups. Dart Container Corp. melts the used polystyrene into a thick liquid, forms it into pellets, and sells it to other companies to make toys and desk trays.

Oh, the sins we commit in the name of virtue.Take the environment: specifically, recycling. The ''tree huggers'' - those extremists who would save the Earth - often jump to conclusions that come back to bite us. Because their suggestions, nay, demands, are made in the name of environmentalism, they become religion and society adopts them without thinking or objecting.The thought occurred to me at a recent civic function where coffee was served in polystyrene cups. (To most folks, that's Styrofoam - the brand name.